Wiseness :: Love After Love

Today I had a smart, capable, big-hearted client who said to me ‘I have grief about how long I did the thing that wasn’t right for me.’ It’s crushed her and she’s now picking herself up and forging a new path with bravery, self-compassion and curiosity… inspite of still feeling fearful and uncertain. She is choosing courage. This poem to me is the essence of taking a leap. This is for her.

Love after Love

BY DEREK WALCOTT

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.